Book Burning

Book Burning

Once upon a time in a Barnes and Nobel just down the street from my house I was wandering around like a lost soul as I am want to do from time to time. On this particular visit I did not have an agenda or a specific collection of words by a particular author in mind to purchase. I was, at that moment, free to discover without prejudice some new reading to enlighten my soul.

I do not remember what else I purchased that day. It may have been The Corpse Exhibition, which is in my not so humble estimation the greatest collection of short stories in the history of writing to date. If this is in fact the case, the following share is even more embarrassing. But I did, wandering around the tables they have that I find particularly annoying, pick up actress Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (spoiler: yes, for good goddamn reason too). I was all like she’s kinda funny. That’s why I bought this book. I know I was actively trying to read more female authors and was curious what this new found TV star who I’d seen in exactly one movie and a handful of terrible episodes of The Office USA where she had stood out. This was a mistake.

The book is fucking awful. I mean like it’s up there with Joyce in how much I disliked it. I never even finished the book. I threw it in the back of my hatchback and it kicked around my car for years until I finally tossed it in a box of crap that I put in my garage where it stays, cold and alone and away from the books I revere stacked nicely on my shelves. Fuck Mindy Kaling’s life of vacant, absent, lackluster interest. She sucks and I hate her now.

Today, I was once again in B&N wanting a copy of The Atlantic so I could read Ta-Nehesi Coates’s My President Was Black.I read his open letter to his son, Between the World and Methis year. It is a crucial piece of American writing, even more poignant in our collapse. For whatever reason the magazine was not with the others and I didn’t find it until checking out and it was up at the registers. Why? I can only surmise so I would buy two books, an essay by Jhumpa Lahiri and a copy of another magazine.

In my wanderings amongst the working man buying 2017 calendars of cars and girls and other shit, I saw a book by Rainn Wilson, another one of Kaling’s co-stars on that insufferable show. I know this to be at least the third member of the cast of that derivative telenovela who has weaseled their way into the publishing world. Again, I ask in desperation, why?

America is a stupid country. A very, very, very stupid country filled with lots of very stupid people. We don’t read good stories. We don’t read well written stories. We do not read things of substance. Clearly. When some asshole brings a riffle into a pizza parlor because he believes it may be a front for a child sex ring and when kids can’t distinguish reputable news with the god damn click bait that splatters the internet hole of human repugnance (to which I am adding to gleefully but without financial gain, sadly) it is not hyperbolic to insist that America is stupid.

And when we do actually read something by someone who isn’t on TV, it’s often pathological crap, usually about white people doing boring white people shit or killing each other is ways that are methodically psychotic. Gone Baby Gone? Really America? This is your go to for reading? Fuck you. I’ll never make it as a writer (by my e-book at Amazon or at Barnes and Nobel).

So, the following is a list of people no longer allowed to write books. After that is a list of authors America is no longer allowed to read because I said so. Because people listen to me.

People Who Are Not Allowed to Write Books Any More

Mindy Kailing

Rainn Wilson

BJ Novak

Anyone who had anything to do with The Office US at all even if you were just an intern and had the unfortunate luck of ending up there post-grad.

Nicholas Sparks

Tony Hillerman

Steven King

Stephanie Meyers

Rush Limbaugh

That other angry white guy on Fox who keeps writing about presidents

And the other angry white guy too

Ann Coulter

John Grisham

Amy Schumar

Any cast member of Saturday Night live ever but especially those two white women everyone thinks are funny but are actually incredibly racist and classist

Anderson Cooper ( I don’t know if he has actually written a book before but he should not start).

Either of the Deschanel sisters (again if they haven’t yet they should not start)

Anne Rice

Danielle Steele (is this even a real person)

That fat guy who writes Game of Thrones who thinks he’s JRR Tolkien

Fucking Elizabeth Gilbert the tourist

David Sedaris

Dan Savage

Richard Dawkins

Dan Brown

The lady who wrote 50 Shades of Grey and the other shit she wrote

Anyone who wants to write a second memoir

Anybody else I remember and deem terrible at a later date

People on Notice

Chuck Palahniukk

Anyone writing a memoir. Is your life story really that interesting or are you just a white person?

Nick Hornby

People No One Needs to Read Ever Again Ever for Any Reason

James Joyce

Edgar Allen Poe

Shakespeare

JD Salinger

John Steinbeck

Herman Melville

These are not exhaustive lists. They will be updated as needed as my brain decides to work more. I will leave comments open on this post. If you disagree with me or argue with this list your post will be deleted because I am a literary fascist and I will not accept decent on my page.